Firsts
by dart53
Summary: Every group of people probably engages in this game of asking about 'the first time'… The first place you lived; the first thing you remember; the first school you went to; the first girl; the first kiss; the first… Given what they had done in their pasts and what they were doing now it was strange that they'd left this particular 'first' until now.


**Firsts**

Every group of people probably engages in this game of asking about 'the first time'… The first place you lived; the first thing you remember; the first school you went to; the first girl; the first kiss; the first… Given what they had done in their pasts and what they were doing now it was strange that they'd left this particular 'first' until now.

* * *

"What's the 'first' thing you ever swiped?" Casino asked as they were lying in the grass on the bank of the stream that angled through the corner of the vast lawns and gardens that surrounded the mansion. The group's cat burglar started to open his mouth but the safecracker shut him up with a quick addendum to the question; "Not food, Goniff!"

Chief started first, something that was unusual for him. "A pair a pants." He said quietly without elaborating. He'd been avoiding the rented room where he and his mother lived. She was drunk too often, and then there were too many men, but that was a private thing that the others didn't need to know. Most of the time he was out at the edge of town where he could see the desert as it stretched away to the mountains that lay far off in the distance. When he looked down at the ragged pants he was wearing and then up at the new pair hanging behind the house to dry he hadn't even thought about it, he just took them and ran.

"A suite of clothes," Actor contributed; and then uncharacteristically, he, too, fell silent. He wasn't stylishly dressed as he was now. His clothing was 'serviceable', his mother saw to that. She would find cast-offs or buy second-hand items and rework them to fit, repairing the damage until it wasn't noticeable, unless you drew close. He noticed. Even though he loved her for her effort, he noticed and he longed to step out in fashionable clothes again like the others whose families still retained their money and their position in society. After she died, after his father stumbled in to the registrar's office and drunkenly condemned him for lying about his situation, after he'd been turned out onto the streets and humiliated he determined that he would take his place in society again, even if he had to steal it. The first step in his plan required being properly outfitted in a new suit of clothes. He waited outside a tailor's shop until the master was gone, slipped in the back, and lifted a suit from a rack where it was hanging. After he'd donned the suit he stormed the shop and ran his first con on the journeyman by complaining of the poorly executed alterations the master had made. He remembered the journeyman shared his dinner with him as he endeavored to repair the damage and make the suit presentable.

Goniff opened his mouth and to Casino's cocked eyebrow said, "It weren't really food…" And then he smiled at the memory. "A little silver chocolate box for me Mum." His petty theft revolved around food when he was a kid, some of it still did, because he was perpetually hungry. If he walked by a stall as a child, and still now, as an adult, his hand just naturally went out and recovered some of the bounty that lay in the bins. He never even thought about it, it just happened. But this little box, he remembered, this, he had to come up with a quick plan for.

He and some of the chums he ran with were larking about up on the high street and as he walked past the shop window the sun caught and flashed back at him. He stopped to look and saw the little box. He'd never seen anything quite like it, the way it shined in the sunlight, the decoration incised into its surface, and the treasure of wrapped sweets that spilled from it… As he admired it he remembered how his Mum looked that morning, so tired and drawn, so sad, like she'd never smile again; it was the way she'd looked since his brother died. He shot a quick look up and down the street to make sure none of the others were near and then he slipped into the shop. The clerk was all bustle as she restocked the shelves from the stores kept in back and set out the display in the front window. Goniff was small for his age and it was easy for him to get under foot and cause her to trip and spill her armload of goods across the shop floor. He scrambled to help, telling her over and over how sorry he was to have caused her trouble, begging so hard for her forgiveness that she ended up giving him a peck on the cheek and a sweet to go with it rather than a slap and ordering him out. When she went back into the storeroom to dump the damaged goods and pick out their replacements he popped the sweet in his mouth and scooped his prize out of the window and ran for it. He was nearly home before he stopped to take a look and found that it wasn't a real silver box as he'd assumed, but only cardboard covered in tinfoil.

Casino had told them that he started out stealing tractors but he hadn't gone into detail so he turned onto his back and said "Truck 'n trailer rig,' to the blue sky overhead.

Goniff laughed,"Started out bit big didn't ya?"

Casino shrugged. "We…me and Marcus… we didn't plan it. After Joey…, after the baby died the folks weren't up to, to… Well we needed money to keep the family goin', alright!" He blustered out. "We tried for jobs, we did the small stuff around the neighborhood you know, but we still weren't cuttin' it so we went to ask Pop's family for help… Ma's were too far away, see? They said they knew how we could get all the money we'd need."

"And they pointed you at a rig they wanted." Chief set the scene for him; he knew that trick and how well it worked on you when you were desperate.

"Yeah," the safecracker nodded. "They pointed it out, told us where to bring it, and took off." Casino snorted a laugh. "They didn't bother to ask if either of us knew how to drive! When Pop had his car he'd let us back it off the drive sometimes but… Anyway we crawled in the cab and got the thing started up and finally found the right gear just as the driver caught sight of us from the café window. I got the thing rolling fast enough that he slipped off and landed on the road when he tried to catch hold a the door." He laughed again, "and then I creased the whole side a the trailer when I cranked the wheel over so I wouldn't run him over."

"How much did you get for it?"

"Fifty bucks."

'Blimey! That's not much."

Casino snorted. "Guys said it was damaged goods."

Garrison laughed along with is them and then looked away towards the stream. "A winter coat."

They were shocked that the Warden was playing along, surprised that he was volunteering information about himself.

"Did your mother know?" The con man prompted.

The Warden shrugged… "When we left we didn't have much; and we were on the move so there wasn't time to stop and make money… I'm sure she knew, but she looked the other way." They'd banned food as a subject but he told them anyway… "She'd buy what she could and I'd bring in what I could… find…"

Actor knew most of the story, they figured, from when he got to read the Warden's files, but he'd kept the information pretty much to himself. When they were in the states with Casino's family they'd talked around the table and the Warden had hinted around about this, and Casino was pretty sure Garrison and his mother had more than one 'heart-to-heart' where he'd shared details with her. That was one thing about Ma though, Casino thought, as good as she was getting information out of you, she was even better at keeping what she found out to herself. Since he seemed to be in the mood to let them have the information they kept their mouths shut and let him talk.

"When I brought that coat in my mother held it in her lap for a while, and then she took off the coat she was wearing and handed it to me and made me take her old one back and leave it in place of the heavier one. We packed up and left my grandfather's place pretty fast and we didn't have a way to carry much. If we needed something at first she'd buy it, then as the money ran out she tried to work for it, or bargain to trade something that we had with us… That didn't always work. She never asked me to…" Garrison shrugged as he studied a blade of grass. "I'd just go back later and get it. She didn't even ask for the coat, but she needed one if we were going to keep going."

"You came out through Greece, didn't you?" Actor asked to keep him talking.

The Warden nodded his head. "She had my birth certificate and her wedding certificate with her and she took them to the American Embassy when we got there. We didn't have any money for passage but there were already refugee organizations working to get people out of Europe. The guy at the embassy sent her to talk to them and she ended up working for one of them. There wasn't much money in it though so I continued to…to, well, to supplement."

"She know what you were doin' it?" Chief asked.

A shoulder shrugged up and dropped. "She did when we had the money we needed sooner than she expected. I guess she probably knew before that too. We'd sit down to eat and sometimes she'd look at what was on the table and start to cry."

"You keep it up once you got back home?"

Garrison gave a short mirthless laugh. "Not for very long."

"What 'appened?"

"She was working by then, still not making much but working long hours, so I was the one that did the shopping. I'd buy what I could, but if I got the chance I'd take what we needed too. … I brought a dress home for her once. She didn't have a decent one and I saw it and thought it was pretty. I told her I bought it, and I did leave _some_ money for it. But she had a good eye. She knew how much she'd given me and she knew what the dress probably cost…and then I'd brought in all the groceries too."

"What'd she do?"

Garrison shrugged and deliberately pulled stem after stem of tender grass out of their coarser sheathes and tossed them aside as he avoided their eyes. "She went in and got her hairbrush and she laid into me with it. Never said a word, just worked me over from top to bottom, just like my grandfather had. When she finished she took the brush and hit it against the kitchen counter until it broke. Then she turned herself inside out crying."

"Blimey…" Goniff swallowed; his throat dry. "You pinch anything again, after that?"

"No." Garrison took a deep breath and finally looked up to meet their eyes. "Not as long as she was alive."


End file.
